Randomized Greedy Algorithms for Independent Sets and Matchings in Regular Graphs: Exact Results and Finite Girth Corrections

Abstract

We derive new results for the performance of a simple greedy algorithm for finding large independent sets and matchings in constant-degree regular graphs. We show that forr-regular graphs withnnodes and girth at leastg, the algorithm finds an independent set of expected cardinalitywheref(r) is a function which we explicitly compute. A similar result is established for matchings. Our results imply improved bounds for the size of the largest independent set in these graphs, and provide the first results of this type for matchings. As an implication we show that the greedy algorithm returns a nearly perfect matching when both the degreerand girthgare large. Furthermore, we show that the cardinality of independent sets and matchings produced by the greedy algorithm inarbitrarybounded-degree graphs is concentrated around the mean. Finally, we analyse the performance of the greedy algorithm for the case of random i.i.d. weighted independent sets and matchings, and obtain a remarkably simple expression for the limiting expected values produced by the algorithm. In fact, all the other results are obtained as straightforward corollaries from the results for the weighted case.